Have you ever heard of the magazine “Farm and Ranch Living”?  Articles of mine appeared in the magazine in 2005 and most recently the October/November issue in 2019. Both came as a complete shock to me. Let me explain.

As a writer you never know when an idea for a story will present itself. Often times the author is not even looking for a writing project when suddenly out of the blue the perfect story appears that needs to be put down on paper.

In the early two thousands our daughter Jill and her farming husband Greg moved onto an old farm-site  where the remains of an old well graced the farm yard. Jill wanted to accent the old well pump by painting it and surrounding it with flowers.

There was one problem with that idea. The pump handle for the well was missing so my sweet daughter asked me if I would keep an eye out for a pump handle so the “well pump flower garden” would have a more legitimate appearance.

Of course being the dutiful father I agreed I would keep my eyes peeled for a pump handle even though I did not have the vaguest idea where I would begin the search. And then providence struck.

I was hiking on some Federal Wetlands that fifty years ago had been the farm-site  where I had grown up. I was exploring the old haunts of my childhood and looking for artifacts of my growing up years. When I approached the area where our windmill had once stood I recognized the well casing protruding from the ground and next to it I was shocked to see a pump handle laying on the matted grass!

That pump handle had been there for over fifty years. There is no way it should have been exposed like that for me to almost trip over! It was a miracle!

The pump handle story began to take shape as I drove back to our house with the newly discovered handle resting on the front seat next to me. What if I wrote a story from the pump handles point of view. It had probably been the first method of pumping water for the farm animals and it had experienced the history of three generations of my family.

So I wrote the article, composed an introductory letter, included a self addressed, stamped envelope and sent my manuscript to “Farm and Ranch Living”. I heard nothing for weeks which is normal for aspiring authors. We become used to the routine.

One morning as I was collecting our mail out of the mailbox I discover a yellow sticky note stuck to the pile of mostly junk mail. It was a note from our mailman and went something like this, “I enjoyed reading your pump handle story in “Farm and Ranch Living” magazine. It brought back memories of my growing up years on the farm. Thank you.”

How could that be? I had heard nothing from the magazine’s editor about accepting my manuscript.

Since we did not get the magazine I made an emergency trip into our city library to check on their copy resting in the magazine rack. I hurriedly paged through the magazine until I came to a picture of me sitting on the abandoned front steps to our house surrounded by prairie grass. The next page contained the picture of Jill and her family proudly standing by the newly painted pump with the miracle handle attached.

I immediately got on the phone and called the magazine’s editor assuming they had stolen my pump handle story. The editor calmed me down quickly by explaining  that is their procedure for printing author’s stories. No notification from the magazine to the author concerning the manuscript’s publication was sent out.

When the check from the magazine for $350 arrived in the mail several days later I really calmed down. 🙂

The most recent article that just appeared in the October/November issue of “Farm and Ranch Living”, page 47, had an even more unusual journey on its way to successful publication. First of all I never sent the manuscript to the magazine. So how did “Farm and Ranch Living” get my manuscript? This too needs an explanation.

About four years ago I was sitting in the waiting room of the eye doctor’s office. I was paging through the magazine “Birds and Bloom” when I came across an article where a person had a hobby that over the years had blossomed into a full time career. At the end of the article the editors of the magazine invited their readers to submit a similar story where a hobby became a full time job.

Immediately the author in me recognized a writing possibility. You see at the time I was finishing up my sixteenth year of growing pumpkins and selling them from our front yard. Families would pull off the highway into our yard and children’s voices would fill the air as they raced around to find the perfect pumpkin.

Each year I increased the number of pumpkins and soon  a couple hundred pumpkins grew into over 1600 orange orbs. My hobby had certainly grown into a full time job.

I wrote the address to contact the magazine on a piece of scrap paper and tucked it into my billfold for safe keeping.

Shortly there after I sat at my computer and composed the story of my pumpkin hobby becoming a full time pumpkin career. I included pictures of me sitting on a straw bale next to a shock as well as a picture of rows and rows of beautiful orange and white pumpkins filling our yard to overflowing.

I was sure this article would be published. Well three years passed and I heard nothing from the magazine. Since I am a battle tested author I sucked it up and actually forgot about the rejected manuscript. There are always other stories to write! 🙂

Then this summer I received an email from the editor of, yep, you guessed it, “Farm and Ranch Living”. She asked me if I still owned the rights to my ‘pumpkin hobby to career’ manuscript.

It seems “Birds and Bloom” is a sister magazine to “Farm and Ranch Living” and the editor must have been snooping through some of “Birds and Bloom’s” rejected manuscripts when she discovered mine.

Of course I quickly emailed her that my manuscript was still available. By the end of the day we had completed all the legal formalities and she announced my manuscript which they gave the title ‘Patch Work’ would be published in the October/November issue.

The magazine came last week and the check is in the mail.

So thanks “Farm and Ranch Living” for those two lightning strikes. Authors never get tired of those experiences.

Let’s see, an article published in 2005 and then again in 2019…..that’s an article every fourteen years. That means I’ve got to get another manuscript ready by 2033. I can do that. We authors get story ideas all the time, sometimes when we least expect it. 🙂

Until next time.